How To Write For People… and Search Engines
By Anna Johnson on January 20th, 2009Is it possible to write web copy, articles and press releases for BOTH human readers and search engines? The kind of copy that people find compelling and persuasive… and that helps your webpages get highly ranked in the search engines?
From a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective, many assume there is an optimal level of keyword density and frequency for a webpage to rank highly in the search engines.
Big assumption because no search engine has (or is likely to) ever publicize such a level. If one exists.
And even if there is an optimal keyword density and/or frequency, no-one knows how much weight is given to this by the search engine algorithms.
Most in the search engine community do, however, believe that search engines do consider keyword density and keyword frequency in assessing the relevance of a webpage for a given keyword (or key phrase).
So, when it comes to writing copy, do you go out of your way to ensure your copy achieves certain keyword density and/or keyword frequency levels? And to what extent do you do this in light of the need to produce interesting, well-written copy for human readers?
Different SEO copywriters use different approaches, but, when it comes to ‘dual purpose copy’ our general approach to SEO copywriting is to write for people first, search engines second. To that end we take a three-step approach:
- Write the best, most compelling copy possible for a human reader.
- Remove unnecessary words (i.e. ‘filler’) and, wherever possible, strategically weave in the keywords (i.e. in heading tags and body copy), ensuring the copy still reads well and/or wouldn’t detract from the reader’s experience.
- Take a break and then come back to the copy with fresh eyes. This helps us see if there are further opportunities to improve keyword density and frequency, whilst maintaining readability.
